Using IPv6 on Packet Tracer

This article is written by Jesin A the author of Packet Tracer Network Simulator. Cisco Packet Tracer is a powerful network simulation program and provides simulation, visualization, authoring, assessment, and shows collaboration capabilities of a network. This article explains the IPv6 addresses used in Packet Tracer.

IPv4 has 4.3 billion addresses, which may seem mindboggling. However, it took only two decades for it to reach its depletion. IPv6 has come to the rescue in the form of 128-bit addresses. Packet Tracer supports a wide array of IPv6 features. We'll start by learning how to assign IP addresses to different devices and how to configure routing between them. Finally, we'll create a setup that enables IPv6 communication over IPv4 devices.

Assigning IPv6 addresses

Starting from Packet Trace Version 6, the IP Configuration utility under the Desktop tab of end devices has an option to enter an IPv6 address. Let's begin with a simple topology consisting of two PCs and a router connected to a switch, as shown in the following screenshot:

There are three ways of assigning IPv6 addresses to a device and we'll see each one of them.

Autoconfiguration

Autoconfiguration requires the least amount of configuration but makes it difficult to remember the IPv6 addresses. This method uses the MAC address of the device to create an IPv6 address with the FE80:: prefix. Carry out the following steps to assign IPv6 addresses using Autoconfiguration:

Begin by configuring the router. Enter the interface configuration mode and enable IPv6 on the interface.

These IPv6 addresses may vary when you try them out, as they are based on the MAC address. Enable routing so that this router can be identified as a default gateway.

R0(config)#ipv6 unicast-routing

The configuration of the router is now done, let's move on to the PCs. Go to the Desktop tab of the PC, open IP Configuration , and under the IPv6 Configuration section, choose Auto Config . The gateway and the PC's IP address will be assigned automatically, as shown in the following screenshot:

Use the simple PDU tool to test the connectivity; you'll see ICMPv6 packets moving between the nodes. To view the IPv6 address from the command line of PCs, use the ipv6config command.

Static IPv6

IPv6 addresses can also be assigned statically on all devices. We'll use the same topology for this section too. We'll carry out the following steps to configure IPv6 addresses statically:

Now that we have configured IPv6 addresses on a single network, let's configure them on more networks and enable routing between them.

IPv6 static and dynamic routing

Similar to IPv4, IPv6 too supports both static and dynamic routing. Configuration commands for its static routing are similar to IPv4.

Static routing

Modifying the same topology that we used previously, let's add a router, switch, and two PCs to create a separate network, as shown in the following screenshot:

The first network will use addresses starting from 2000:1::/64 and the second network will use addresses starting from 2000:2::/64. The link between both the routers will have IP addresses 2001::10/64 and 2001::20/64.

Here is a table describing the topology:

Device

Interface

IP address

R1

FastEthernet0/0

2000:1::1/64

FastEthernet0/1

2001::10/64

PC0

FastEthernet

2000:1::2/64

PC1

FastEthernet

2000:1::3/64

R2

FastEthernet0/0

2000:2::1/64

FastEthernet0/1

2001::20/64

PC2

FastEthernet

2000:2::2/64

PC3

FastEthernet

2000:2::3/64

After the necessary IP addresses and gateways have been assigned, open the CLI tab for the R1 router, and start configuring routing by following the given commands:

Dynamic routing

Packet Tracer offers the same dynamic routing protocols for IPv6: RIPv6, EIGRP, and OSPF. We'll be configuring RIPv6 in this section. Note that RIPv6 does not represent RIP Version 6; it is RIP for IPv6 addresses.

For this exercise, we'll use the topology shown in the following screenshot:

The additional IP assignment details alone are shown in the following table:

Device

Interface

IPv6 Address

R2

FastEthernet1/0

2001:1::10/64

R3

FastEthernet0/0

2000:3::1/64

FastEthernet0/1

2001:1::20/64

PC2

FastEthernet

2000:3::2/64

We'll see how to configure RIP on one router and you can do the same on the others.

Note that the ipv6 rip command is used to enable RIP on a particular interface. Entering ipv6 rip Net1 enable on the first interface begins the RIPv6 process. The Net1 string can be any name that can be used to name the RIP process. Once configured, use the usual diagnostic tools (ping to simple PDU) to check the connectivity. To view the RIP database, use the following command:

Summary

In this article, we learned how to use IPv6 with Packet Tracer. We saw the limitation of the IPv4 addresses. We also learned how to assign IPv6 addresses and how to configure IPv6 static and dynamic routing.

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